According to a news release from the Natural Environment Research Council, researchers have rediscovered the lost home of the last Neanderthals.

The finding was made when the researchers conducted fieldwork to examine a section of the La Cotte de St. Brelade cave, on Jersey’s south eastern coastline. A significant section of the site has sediments dating to the last Ice Age, safeguarding 250,000 years of climate change and archaeological data.

The site, which has generated more Neanderthal stone tools than the rest of the British Isles combined, has the only known late Neanderthal remains from North West Europe. These provide researchers one of the most significant records of Neanderthal conduct available.

“In terms of the volume of sediment, archaeological richness and depth of time, there is nothing else like it known in the British Isles,” notes Dr. Matt Pope of the Institute of Archaeology at University College London. “Given that we thought these deposits had been removed entirely by previous researchers, finding that so much still remains is as exciting as discovering a new site.”

The researchers dated sediments at the site utilizing a method known as Optically Stimulated Luminescence, which determines the last time sand grains felt the sunlight.

The findings revealed that part of the sequence of sediments dates between 100,000 and 47,000 years old, suggesting that Neanderthal teeth which were found at the site in 1910 were younger than previously believed, and likely came from one of the last Neanderthals to reside in the region.

“We were sure from the outset that the deposits held some archaeological potential, but these dates indicate we have uncovered something exceptional,” Pope says. “We have a sequence of deposits which span the last 120,000 years still preserved at the site. Crucially, this covers the period in which Neanderthal populations apparently went ‘extinct’.”

It was during this period that Neanderthal populations appear to have been replaced by Homo Sapiens.

According to the news release, this was the first formal program of scientific research to be concentrated on the site since the early 1980s. The site has since then been managed and preserved by a Jersey-based academic society, called Société Jerisaise.

“For over a hundred years the Societe has tried to maintain the interest of the wider academic world in La Cotte, having realized its international importance from the beginning. We are delighted, therefore, that such a prestigious team is now studying the site, and, in addition, the wider Paleolithic landscape of Jersey,” posits Neil Molyneux, president of the Société Jersiaise.

The researchers will continue to examine the site and material dug up from it over the past century.

“Working with our partners to bring these rediscovered sediments under new analysis will allow us to bring the lives of the last Neanderthal groups to live in North West Europe into clearer focus,” Pope adds. “We may be able to use this evidence to better understand when Neanderthal populations disappeared form the region and whether they ever shared the landscape with the species which ultimately replaced them, us.”

The study’s findings are described in greater detail in the Journal of Quaternary Science.

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